Aspiring authors take e-route to success

A recent survey states that 46 per cent of users in the country spend
over six hours on the Internet daily, besides the sale of e-reading
devices-such as Kindle, Kobo and tablets-is slowly but surely growing.

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Ashwin Ahmad

New Delhi

October 5, 2014

UPDATED: October 5, 2014 09:52 IST

Amateur writers are taking to self-publishing, especially digitally, to make a niche for themselves.

Books have been man's best friends forever, and the advent of improved technology, more services and greater awareness has only led to a spurt in self-publishing in India. From online majors such as Amazon to traditional players like Penguin, they are all offering services for aspiring authors and giving them an opportunity to design their own book jackets and set prices. Publishing in India has taken a completely new turn. People in the trade point out that the change has been happening for some time now.

A recent survey states that 46 per cent of users in the country spend over six hours on the Internet daily, besides the sale of e-reading devices-such as Kindle, Kobo and tablets-is slowly but surely growing. Therefore, it isn't difficult to understand that the role of a middleman (read traditional publishers) is diminishing every day; and amateur authors no longer need publishing houses to help take their story to readers. This thought is seconded by author Rasana Atreya who initially had a contract with a traditional offline publisher but later decided to opt for self-publishing, more specifically Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing-a platform which allows authors to upload their books and market them. It's a choice Atreya never regretted.

"Self-publishing is a world apart. You gain 70 per cent of royalties, while traditional publishers give usually only offer between five to 20 per cent. The other thing is that if you upload your own book, you can track sales, change the price of the book to see if sales are impacted, run promotions, change the cover of the book if you think it is not good enough and so on. You do not have this kind of a control over your own books if you're publishing through someone," Atreya says.

Her satisfaction is being echoed by a number of fellow authors, many of whom claim that they would never have been published if they had taken the "traditional' route to publishing.

Naveen Valsakumar, cofounder of one of the largest epublishing houses in India Notion Press, confirms this. He claims his publishing house gets 400 to 500 requests a month from authors. Of these requests, only 60 to 70 new books are published each month.

"The shift to e-books is going to have a profound effect on the market. On the upside, small and independent publishers will be able to compete with bigger guys more easily in the online sphere," he says.

Such advantages of self-publishing, however, do not mean that the e-book publishing world is a gold mine. Atreya points out, "There are some online publishing houses, called 'vanity publishers', who charge huge amounts of money for editing, cover designing and uploading. All these things can be done more cheaply through a one time-expense with a reputed editor and cover designer."

She, thus, advises budding eauthors to research well before picking a publishing house or choosing to self-publish.

With a large number of aspirant authors taking the new route to publishing, some reputed traditional publishers have ventured into the selftrade as well to give competition to the advantages of self-publishing. Penguin Random House have rolled out what they call esingles, which are short digitalonly reads meant for "people who are short on time, fond of reading and want to catch up on some reading during their routine commute or lunch hour".

One can buy these digital read on several e-commerce websites.

Penguin Books India is not alone. Harper Collins Publishing also launched their e-singles service called Harper XXI with genres ranging from crime and romance to sports and business. With prices starting at Rs 20 per story, esingles remain the traditional publisher's answer to what can only be called the online "blitz".

Valsakumar points out, "While big players have already made the transformation, it is up to small players to embrace this change quickly as it offers them a better chance in the marketplace." Having recognised that today's author, much like the customer, is the 'king', traditional publishers have unrolled a bevy of packages which the aspiring author can pick and choose from. Penguin's new self publishing imprint Partridge, launched in partnership with Author Solutions, offers services ranging from design, illustration, print formatting and distribution to online retailers, international marketing and distribution. The fees can range from Rs 10,000 to over Rs 1.5 lakh, depending on what you choose.

So, president and CEO of Author Solutions Kevin Weiss rightly says, "It is truly the best time in history to be an author."